Python's string.translate() doesn't fully work?

Question

Given this example, I get the error that follows:

print u'\2033'.translate({2033:u'd'})

C:\Python26\lib\encodings\cp437.pyc in encode(self, input, errors)
     10
     11     def encode(self,input,errors='strict'):
---> 12         return codecs.charmap_encode(input,errors,encoding_map)
     13
     14     def decode(self,input,errors='strict'):

UnicodeEncodeError: 'charmap' codec can't encode character u'\x83' in position 0

Answer 1

Try this instead:

>>> print u'\u2033'.translate({0x2033:u'd'})
d

Since you used u'\2033' instead of u'\u2033', The result was two characters: u'\203'+u'3'. Trying to print this gave an exception because your terminal's encoding doesn't support the character u'\203' (which is the same as u'\x83').

Also note the difference between 2033 and 0x2033 in the dictionary: The \uxxxx escape sequence takes its value in hexadecimal, so you'd need 0x2033 to match it.

Regarding your question's title, string.translate (the translate function in the string module) doesn't support a dictionary as a parameter, but calling .translate on the unicode string itself (as you did in the question body) works.